Eye Candy

It’s amazing how just a little change in soil pH changes the flora in the area.

Everywhere I’ve gardened before in the East Tennessee area, the soil pH has been around 6.0-6.5, with one garden spot even in the 5’s!  This particular piece of ground in Crab Orchard has a pH of 6.8.  Yes, 6.8–just almost a perfect 7.0 for most garden veggies.  Well, the pH may be great, but there’s still a lot of weeds, bugs, clay soil, blah, blah, blah.

This post is not about garden soil.  It’s about the native wildflowers growing in the area.  Wildflowers I haven’t had on my property before.  I was absolutely delighted when in the woods I spotted Spigelia marilandica on the farm…..

Also known as Indian Pink (there’s nothing pink about it, btw), this is one of the most stunning wildflowers in the area.   This particular plant has 6 blooms lined up along the stem–amazing!  It’s growing on an east-facing slope along the driveway.

This time of year is great for observing all the beautiful wildflowers, but also a time of collection–seed collecting, that is.  To propagate these flowers one must carefully watch the blooms as they fade and go to seed.

Geranium maculatum, aka Wild Geranium, bloomed a few weeks ago, and it’s a lovely woodland flower worth propagating.   Also known as “Cranesbill”, when the bloom turns into a seed head it becomes a long spearlike shape that could be construed to look like a crane’s bill I guess……

 

Here are seeds I collected just a couple of days ago.  The one on the extreme left is an unripe seed head–the “cranesbill”.  Notice the swollen area at the bottom of the “bill”.

The next seed head to the right in the photo is ready for collection.  I think it’s really neat how each seed is attached to a tendril that curls up around the “bill”, and each one looks like a little chandelier!  At this stage one must be careful in handling them because the seeds come off really easily.  These are to be sown immediately upon collection and then one must wait for the babies to appear so they can be nurtured and planted back into a shaded area for the cycle of life to begin all over again.

Ahhhh spring!

It seems like every winter is a bad winter.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or if winter really is getting colder.  A lot of it could be the fact that my occupation is totally dependent on the weather and I notice it a lot more than I used to.

I love taking walks in the woods this time of year, before the trees leaf out, to soak in the beauty of the spring ephemerals and fret over where to step in order to avoid smashing a pretty flower.

A brief walk behind the house in between rain showers shows that yet again, the spring lovelies have popped up to greet me:

I didn’t realize just how much blue cohosh there is behind the house, but there are enormous patches of this plant!

 

Happy columbine balances on a bluff rock awaiting the hummingbirds’ arrival…..

 

Foamflower lightens up the woods with beautiful foamy blooms.

Yellow trillium grows like weeds on the property across the canal.  Its blooms smell like lemon Joy!

Jack in the Pulpit is such an interesting plant.  After the flower fades a cluster of bright red berries will appear.

and the Virginia Bluebells continue to bloom……

 

 

Winter chores and a wildflower walk

Winter chores are nothing new.  While on the way home from town Friday, I noticed that the 36″ culverts that carry the canal through my property were sort of getting overgrown and close to getting clogged up….

It’s way easier to clean out a culvert BEFORE it gets clogged with everything that culverts get clogged up with.  After chainsawing for about 30 minutes and piling everything up in between the culverts, I was able to get a small fire started to burn the debris….

Once the fire went out I had a small bucket of glass bottles, a tractor bucket load of firewood, 2 clean culverts and a good workout!

I checked the beehive and was so happy to see that it was FULL of bees and they were BUSY!

After planting 6 flats of assorted greens; lettuce, kale, mustard, and braising mix in the large high tunnel, I threw several bags of leaves into the chicken pen to keep the girls out of the mud.  They love scratching in the leaves and will spread a pile of them in no time.

THEN I had promised the girls I would clean out their coop and put fresh leaves in there.  It’s amazing how much quicker their coops get pooped out in the winter when they are stuck inside during cold weather.

 

I used hay last time for their bedding.  I won’t do that again.  It turns into a solid mat that has to be chopped apart AND I had to put it in a separate compost area because I know how many weeds can germinate from hay–BUT it was all I could get at the time.  I refloored their coop with fresh dry leaves from my stash.   It smells wonderful.

Today was a gorgeous day so Hattie (the dog), Bandit (the girl kitty) and I decided to take a late afternoon wildflower walk.  There really are wild things to look at this time of year, and some are even starting to grow (I’m so excited!)  Here’s a visual of our afternoon journey.

This is a very cool bluff right behind the house.  The stream you see is it….it comes out from under the rocks where I was standing and goes back in where the black area is in the top of the picture.  Very cool spot.

The rocks are leaking….look closely… maybe you can see.

Beautiful moss garden–it loves this weather!

Columbine starting to show some life…

Heuchera showing its winter colors…

Native pachysandra should be sending up white flowers before long.

Sedum

and Walking Fern are still attractive through the winter.

The pond is full to overflowing with the recent rains.

Days like today give one that boost of sunshine desperately needed this time of year!